"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.

August 07, 2008

When we moved to Canaan six years ago (on Emily's second birthday), I started to put stars in her sky. Instead of random patterns of glowing stickers, I tried to map out the constellations of late August over her bed and across the ceiling. The constellations of her nativity include some that always abide in our northern latitude - the great Queen Cassiopeia and the great northern bear - and some, like Scorpio with its mad eye Antares that scuttles along the southern horizon, dreaming of hot desert winds and equatorial nights. High overhead, winging through the Milky Way, I placed cruciform Cygnus with gleaming Deneb at its tail, diamond white Vega adorning the Lyre, and Altair, the Eagle's eye, completing the great triangle.

We saw them all last night, the three of us driving out at dusk to the open farmland between Sheffield and Egremont, the spine of the Taconics low in the west and nary a porch light to mar the view. We turned onto a dirt road and watched the sickle moon slide toward the hills as the stars grew ever brighter above. I showed Emily and Elias how to find Polaris from the lip of the Dipper, and taking a bearing from its handle to arc to Arcturus and spike to Spica. We found the Northern Crown with glowing Gemma, the Dolphin leaping in the creaming wake of the Milky Way, and the Teapot, short and stout, with luminous Jupiter near at hand. There were shooting stars, half a dozen perhaps in the course of an hour, building up to the Perseid's crescendo in the early hours of August 12th. We saw myriad planes with their flashing lights, and two faint satellites following their regular paths to the vanishing point. We lay on the hood of the car, telling stories of the heroes and beasts that dwell in the firmament, and it didn't matter that it was well past time for bed. The greatest show on Earth is in the heavens.

August 06, 2008

Here's a castle in an incongruous place (still standing in fact, though nicely whitewashed and landscaped). Anyone beside my friend Ben who lives nearby know what it is called, where it is, and whose it was when this picture was taken?

August 04, 2008

I got back late at night from visiting a friend Sunday evening. I stepped out of my car and glanced up at the sky and froze, head cocked back and eyes wide and wondering. I haven't seen a starry night like this in many years, especially not in summer when the atmosphere in these parts is often thick with haze. In this land of unshielded lights, the the Milky Way is seldom seen in its true glory, but last night what the Bushmen call "the wood ash stars" were so clear it was as if they had been pricked in black velvet and held to the light. I saw half a dozen of the Perseids streak across the sky, one of these so bright when I closed my eyes I could still see the track of its passage. Jupiter in the Southwest was the pearly color of oyster shell. I thought I could pluck each string of Lyra and feel the great wing beats of Cygnus bearing its cross along the edge of the Galaxy where the stars seem to cluster.

One of the great gifts of my years in Africa where season after season of dark skies, with nothing but a campfire below to mar my night vision. I saw planets in close conjunction and a comet spitting blue fire at the horizon. I learned the names of unfamiliar stars and constellations in those southern skies, and to recognized those from the north in their inverted form. Nights that clear and dark are as rare in this latitude as rural electricity was back then in Namibia, though sometimes in winter when the frost adheres to my whiskers with every breath I see something of that remembered glory. The Milky Way, though, is never better than when it bisected the heavens in summer, a celestial charm bracelet dangling crowns and the wings of eagles.

The fireflies of June are gone from the field beyond the garden fence, and already those migrants with the greatest journeys ahead feel the pull of the season and turn toward the south. If I get another of these nights in mid-month, and fine a clear horizon to the west beyond the Taconics that hide the sinking sun, there will be five naked eye planets sharing the same sky. I will remember a dog watch in the Gulf of Maine with meteors of every hue so dazzling that they called to mind the great Aurora, and tales told of Asgard and dragon ships far from land. If I am very lucky, I will have two more pairs of eyes and two small hands in mine for company as we watch the curtain rise and the wheeling dance of the night sky.

August 03, 2008

The youngest members of Red Sox Nation in our household are too young to remember the dry years. They have never seen their heroes as bums, or endured a second half of the season with the Sox slumping out of contention. These are their years of irrational exuberance.

They came to the game when their Dad was still on the delirious crest of the 2004 Series and before the 2007 championship. They saw their first giddy game at Fenway in June in great seats and the Sox won. The first time they saw the Old Town Team on the tube - in a Maine motel room on the way to a vacation without electricity on a magical island far out to sea - they formed emotional attachments to its marque players. Elias naturally went for Big Papi. Emily gave her heart unconditionally to Manny Ramirez.

I haven't yet had the heart to tell her he's gone.

Baseball teaches you to savor the rare moments of near perfection and to believe in miracles, all the while reminding you to get used to disappointment. The lessons of the grand cathedral of the grass come from Matthew 23:12. The homilies are all about hope and loss. Our communion of saints is reserved for those who have passed on to a better place, not fallen by the wayside. Where are Nomar, Pedro and Lowe? Joined another church. Where are Boggs, Clemens and Damon? Joined a rival sect. Change is certain. Give your heart and expect it to be broken. Risk love knowing it can't last. Some things endure.

Emily fell for Manny at first sight. How could she not? He was not the silent leader, brilliant behind the plate but woeful beside it. He was not the fleet-footed infielder, that springbok in a herd of wildebeest. No, she loved the class clown, charismatic and cute in his baggy uniform and oh so free and easy. I knew with certainty what every father of a tender-hearted daughter learns; this love would end in heartbreak, and there was nothing I could do to spare her. Perhaps postpone it for a day, but no more.

Most of us have been through all this before. Sox & Dawgs describes it perfectly:

"Think back to when you were 16 and fell in “love” that first time and then all of the sudden she dumps you for the high school quarterback or the star running back. You were sad, maybe even upset that your one true love was gone and you’d never be able to go on in life. You can admit that because we’ve all been there before in our lives.

Did you get over it? Sure you did but it took time. No matter if you loved her or hated her, you got over her and moved on to one of her friends probably (women can reverse the scenario to where he left you for the head cheerleader or one of the cheerleaders).

The same applies here. You will get over the loss of Manny. Yes you were expecting him to be wearing a Red Sox uniform for the rest of his career and now are thinking that you’re going to have to change the name of your dog or cat because you loathe Manny. All normal reactions I tell you because you will get over it.

If we sit here and lament over the loss of Manny, we aren’t going to be able to move on. Sure there’s going to be that grieving period where you pinch yourself just to make sure this wasn’t just all a bad dream. Believe me, I’m with you, I wish it was a bad dream too. I am even sure you might even sneak a peak at the Dodgers boxscore tonight just to see what Manny did. You might even have stopped by here earlier in the evening when we have posted what Manny has said in his press conference this afternoon at Dodger Stadium.

No matter what you do, you will be fine."

Will her love turn to loathing, her tender heart tenderized with a 33 oz bat? Will she carry a torch even as he wears the Dodger Blue? Or will she, with the wellsprings of an 8-year-old's empathy, somehow see through the casual clown to the tears within? Today, at least, Manny Ramirez' Official Site has not yet moved on from the Sox. Will he, ten years from now in a middle-aged funk, look back on his glory days, twisting the school rings of '04 and '07, and remember lost love?

I can tell her that this will pass, and share my own stories of Red Sox hope and heartbreak. I can hope that she falls for that nice kid Pedroia, or wingfooted Ellsbury. None of that will matter. Her heart is her own. It will find its way.

August 02, 2008

Dateline, London - The leather smallclothes worn by George Washington sold at auction today for €7,350 ($11,440), the most ever paid for Presidential breeches. Daryl McWilliams of Bishop's Stortford, Herts., has been collecting Washington memorabilia for more than 20 years, and says that these buff deerskin pants will have a prized place in his collection. "I don't have a set of his false teeth, yet", said Mr. McWilliams, "bit these pants had a front seat at history. It gives you chills."

In addition to the President's leather pants, McWilliam's collection includes the corset Washington wore as a young man to maintain the broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted physique that was so desirable for men of his station. "Washington was a big man, especially for that time", said McWilliams. "These leather breeches are so tight, they leave little to the imagination. They fit him like a second skin. Maybe that's why the Father of your Country had no children of his own."

I rather doubt you'll ever see a story like this about Washington's hot pants in the MSM. Definitely in poor taste. We prefer to snicker instead about Queen Victoria's enormous crotchless knickers being bought at auction by a woman from Canada. Jolly good, what?